He nodded.
She wasn’t surprised. “I get ideas that way too. Something that’s been nagging at me for days will suddenly come clear just as I’m waking up.” The energy that followed was always productive.
Lance smiled. “I thought you worked through things in the dead of night with power tools in the workshop.”
She pulled one leg up and crossed the other over. “That’s different. That’s when I know what’s wrong and can’t fix it.”
“Ah.” He reached for his guitar. Closing his eyes, he picked softly, mouthing words she couldn’t hear, caught up in the creative flow she’d interrupted. She didn’t mind. When he was ready, he’d share it.
She’d been agitated, but now it felt okay to sit there without conversation. Lance was funny that way, full of words but capable of silence. Besides, his mind was on his song. Okay, she was curious. He didn’t usually keep lyrics to himself, even autobiographical words that revealed so much. And he’d made things up on the spot, not needing it “there” before he shared.
Why was this one private? She jolted. The things he’d kept private in the past had hurt. “Lance?”
“It’s about yesterday.” There he was, reading her mind again. “Making sense of it all.”
His own struggle. None of her business. “Sorry.”
“For what?” He sent her a soft glance.
Doubting. Fearing. Assuming it involved her. “Butting in.”
One side of his mouth pulled. “You didn’t butt.”
“Okay.”
And now she was content to sit across from him. He didn’t seem to mind that much. As the light grew, she picked up and browsed through a photographic history of the Bronx, Lance’s world. His hotdog remark had revealed something. He might leave New York, but it would never entirely leave him. Whole sections of the book recounted the Italian influence and heritage in the boroughs. She mainly read the captions under the pictures, but she got the idea clearly enough.
She had never thought of herself historically, wasn’t even sure what her Barrett heritage was and knew even less about Mom’s background. There was Aunt Georgie, Dad’s sister, but if Mom had any close relatives, she didn’t know them. And she seriously doubted there were any books describing her people’s contributions. She’d focused on her own accomplishments, and Dad’s. But that wasn’t much of a lineage.
Lance was part of— She looked up, surprised, when Star came out of the bedroom. “You’re up early.”
Yawning, Star balled her hair onto her head. “We’re singing at the Java Cabana.”
Star was off to sing already? Star who spent days, weeks, in bed?
“You should come,” Star said. “We’re easing people into their day, soothing their jangled auras.”
Did she look jangled, or had the tossing and turning clued her in? Rese frowned. She just didn’t know what to think or do or want or hope for. This was supposed to be simple, but nothing with Lance was simple. Their whole day-to-day life was only the surface for him, and then there was this ocean of … uncertainty.
Rico joined them, his black hair hanging to his shoulders with several strands bound in thread. In his soft billowy shirt and fitted leather pants, he looked like an astral gypsy with his fingers thrumming the bongos under one arm, Chaz’s steel drum hung on his back, a melodious turtle shell.
“You ought to come.” Star glanced from her to Lance on the couch, picking his guitar with a soft fury.
Rese shook her head. “Another time.”
Star let her hair fall down over her bare shoulders and the cropped halter that revealed her sprite’s shape and translucent abdomen. Her skirt was blue strips of cotton batik that swished and parted when she walked, revealing her thin legs to the macram sandals that were more California than Manhattan. Together they looked as otherworldly as their music.
When the door had closed behind them, she said, “Can Rico keep her safe in that getup?”
“Java Cabana’s in the theater district. She’ll fit in.”
Rese wasn’t sure if he meant with the actors or the streetwalkers, but didn’t ask. Lance stared after them with a pensive look.
“What?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I keep looking for the real Rico.”
“Maybe he just needed the blue fairy to make him a real boy.”
“No, there’s donkey ears in there.”
Rese laughed. “Is he watching for yours?”
“Probably.” He set the guitar aside with a sigh. “Want to help with breakfast?”
She glanced at the kitchenette. “Okay.”
But they headed out and down the stairs to the restaurant.
“You mean breakfast down here? Are you opening for business?”
“The restaurant is on hold. But it’s Saturday and I’m in town; the family will expect me to cook.” Lance took a massive carton of eggs from a walk-in refrigerator.
Which meant breakfast would be a stampede. She looked longingly at the door. Why hadn’t she flitted away with Star? Because she didn’t flit. She stood like a stone and faced the next challenge. “So what’ll it be? Crepes?” The first thing he had shown her how to make; her first success without him.
“They’ll want something more substantial. We’ll prep for omelets.” Rese chopped the long red peppers and the brown-capped mushrooms Lance called porcini while he cut paper-thin slices of Parma ham, also known as prosciutto. Then he mixed up the egg batter and sprinkled it with an herb that he rubbed between his fingers, releasing the aroma.
Rese breathed. “What’s that?”
“Nipetella, a sort of minty variety of thyme.”
He held a sprig to her nose. It smelled woodsy, and she would not have thought of putting it in eggs.
“It enhances the mushrooms.”
She liked how he combined words like enhance and mushrooms. Those weeks in the inn’s kitchen without him had felt so empty, even with Star and Chaz and Rico and all the guests they were cooking for. The kitchen might be the heart of a home, but Lance was the heart of a kitchen.
She had just started to enjoy herself when Monica crashed in with her family.
“Oh good, you’re cooking. Eggs? Nicky eats them plain. Franky’s okay with prosciutto, but don’t put the peppers in.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “And don’t let me smell porcini.”
Lance waved her off as he had when Rese told him she didn’t like artichokes.
“Mary and Jonny don’t like mushrooms either. No cheese in Bobby’s. And go light on the pepper.”
Lance took his sister by the arms and moved her away from the stove. “Fan your lips that way; the dining room’s stuffy.”
Monica swung for his head, but he ducked back to the stove and gave Rese a wink. A rush of warmth swept her. She should know better than to get near him in a kitchen.
He worked at the stove, pouring and filling omelet pans set over low flames. But then Lucy’s children ran in and grabbed him around the legs, pummeling and raising the noise level several decibels. He hollered, “Take over, Rese, while I clobber these guys.”
She was beginning to understand physical communication. It involved fists and tangled limbs and laughter. While they expressed themselves, she turned to the stove. Though she had managed baked frittatas with his instruction at the inn, the operation he had happening here was beyond her. Thankfully, Lucy and Monica came over, and together they folded and removed the omelets to warmed plates Lance had set ready. Rese frowned. Once again it took multiple people to fill his shoes.
Lucy nudged her glasses up with the back of her wrist. “My kids aren’t always violent. Lance brings it out in them.”
“Who else is going to train them for the streets?” Lance hollered as Monica’s youngsters joined the fray.
“Even as a kid he was always fighting, sticking up for someone smaller—or smarter.” Lucy laughed.
“Yeah,” Monica agreed, “but sometimes he talked his way out. And with those eyes?”
Rese knew
the impact of Lance’s eyes. It was an unfair advantage.
The cacophony rose again when Bobby came in hollering that he had a headache and could he get some quiet somewhere someday?
Monica rolled her eyes. “Your headache is your own fault, and don’t take it out on the kids.”
But Lucy shooed them out to the dining room, and Lance came back to the stove.
Bobby opened and slammed cabinets. “Isn’t there any aspirin in this place?”
Monica heaved a sigh. “I’ll get you aspirin. Watch the kids.”
He jacked up the jeans on his narrow hips. “I’ll get the aspirin; you watch the kids.”
“You should’ve gone to work,” she hollered after him.
Lance said, “Get your kids fed. Full mouths make less noise.”
Monica loaded her arms with so many plates it was obvious she’d waited tables, probably in this very restaurant. Rese noted the differences in the omelets Monica took out to the dining room. Lance had prepared them according to her orders in spite of their argument. How had he kept it straight? His mind obviously processed chaos.
Then he was back preparing the next wave for Lucy and her children. Her husband, Lou, must be at work or still in bed. At least he hadn’t shown his face in the kitchen. And Lance’s parents had not joined them either.
“Rese, can you set out the fruit trays?” Lance nodded toward the platters on the counter that held assorted sliced melons and berries. When had he done that? Or maybe it was Lucy, who seemed to have a proficiency with food as well.
Rese carried the trays out to the dining room. It was twice the length but narrower than her own inn’s, with tables packed in. The old men who had rooms in the back had taken seats at one of the two large tables that had been pulled together and were swarming with kids. She set a tray on each as Bobby came back and plopped down alone at a small table against the wall. If his head was hurting, why didn’t he stay upstairs?
She went back to the kitchen and found Lance leaning on the oven handle, head dropped to his chest. She hurried over. “What’s the matter?”
He straightened. “Just thinking about Nonna.”
In the midst of the pandemonium, his mind was on his grandmother. She was beginning to see how he could have single-mindedly deceived her when Antonia’s wishes required it. And that deception lost some of its sting.
The truth was, if he had told her it was his family’s villa and he wanted to find something for his ailing grandmother, she’d have told him to take a hike. She had not been in any condition to placate a stranger. She’d been barely holding herself together.
“She’ll be okay, Lance.”
“It’s hard being in here without her.” He sent his gaze around the kitchen. “This was my haven. No matter what I’d done, I knew I’d find comfort here.”
But Antonia was old. She might never work in this kitchen again. His world was changing, and Lance didn’t like change. He was steeped in tradition, in family ways. He wanted a snapshot, but the film kept running. He drew a slow breath and turned back to the stove.
Rese watched him ladle butter into the pans, then a larger ladle of eggs, then sprinkle in the fixings. “Are your parents coming down?”
“Saturdays they breakfast at the market, see all their friends who’ve moved out to the suburbs but come back to shop.”
“Why haven’t they moved out?”
He shrugged. “They could sell the building for quite a bit, I guess, but then the family would scatter. Momma couldn’t stand that.”
“Oh.” A mother who liked her children around, who didn’t have an invisible friend, Walter, suggesting murder.
“Come here.” Lance fitted her in front of him at the stove and put the spatula into her hand. Then he took hold and they folded the next round of omelets, moving together. His scratchy jaw brushed her ear as his breath warmed the side of her neck. She should stop him, but this melding at the stove was so …
“Lance, did you— Oh, sorry.” Sofie stopped inside the door. Her oak-toned hair was pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing the striking features she’d gotten from her mother. Though Lance had his dad’s darker coloring, he and Sofie had hogged the good looks.
Lance turned. “Whatchu need, Sof?”
“I have to run. I just wondered if you’d made something I could take.”
“Give me two seconds.”
Rese moved out of the way as he folded one of the omelets with ham, peppers, and mushrooms into a hard roll and wrapped it in white paper for his sister. “Studying?”
“I’ve got a presentation Monday.” Sofie shifted the portfolio. “Still needs work.”
Rese recognized that driven expression, that dissatisfaction with anything less than perfect. It was a snapshot of herself.
Lance grabbed a salt shaker and shook it over his sister’s shoulder. “Al lupo.”
“Grazie.” She smiled.
“Prego.” He handed the package over with a kiss to his sister’s cheek that was embarrassing in its tenderness.
Sofie only said, “Hug Nonna for me.”
“I can’t go in for a while. She’ll get worked up if she sees me and I haven’t done something she wants.”
“So do it.”
“I can’t yet.”
She studied his face. “Okay.”
Again Rese noted Sofie’s restraint. She didn’t try to pry out more than Lance wanted to say. She respected the boundary—an anomaly in this family.
“Thanks for breakfast.”
Rese returned the quick smile sent her way as Sofie left. Lance watched after her a moment longer than he might have. Something was up with Sofie, but Lance didn’t say what. He came back and began flipping the omelets onto plates. Rese carried them, precariously, to the dining room where Lucy swooped in to help disperse the servings.
Bobby raised his face from his hands and took the plate Rese handed him. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Hope your head’s better.”
“Only thing’s gonna help my head is a little peace and quiet.”
“It’d be quiet at the office,” Monica said.
“That’s what you think? You think telemarketing is quiet? All day people yelling in my ear, hanging up on me.”
“You’re used to that; you been doing it fifteen years. Top sales.”
“You think I like it? All day people complaining?”
“You’d be right at home.”
“Oh, that’s funny. That’s real funny.”
Rese ducked back inside the kitchen. “Are they always that way?”
“Only when Monica’s not meeting Bobby’s needs. Then he drinks too much and regresses.”
Rese raised her brows. “Isn’t that their business?”
“Does it sound like they’re keeping it that way?”
“Not exactly.”
“There aren’t many secrets around here.”
Unlike Sonoma, where secrets seemed to breed. Rese fingered the hair at the nape of her neck. “There’s Sofie.”
His brow puckered. “That’s different. We don’t talk about it because she doesn’t.”
Rese nodded. “It’s not my business anyway.”
“Come here.”
She went to stand before him.
He raised her chin, his fingertips emitting an energy barely held in check. “It’s all your business. I wanted you here, in the middle of it.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Rese stared into his face. He’d said he cared, even that he was falling in love—but “I love you”? The last person to say that put her to bed and disabled the furnace.
“Go to sleep, Theresa. In the morning everything will be different. I love you, sugar. You know I love you.”
She had blocked those last words, refused to connect her mother’s love with the actions of that night. But not anymore. She was facing things now. No more deception, even in her own mind.
Lance’s eyes took on a midnight intensity
. She knew what he wanted to hear, what came so easily for him, the love and affection that infected every relationship he had. He was in love every week, he’d said. Well, she wasn’t, even if her heart was imitating Rico on the bongos.
He let go and turned to the stove. “You ready to eat?”
“If you’re cooking.” She’d disappointed him, but she couldn’t help that. Two and a half months might be long enough for him to decide he was in love, but what mattered to her was stability, longevity, security. What mattered was truth.
“Thought you were the expert in the kitchen now.”
She snorted. “I’m no chef.”
He expelled a slow breath. How could empty air say so much?
“What?”
“I’m not either.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t have credentials. I learned from Nonna and my second cousin twice removed, Suar Maria Conchessa. But … no chef school, no degree, just old-fashioned apprenticeship.”
It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t change his ability. It was only a title, a paper. Had he ever called himself a chef? She had billed him that on the Web site, and he hadn’t corrected her. Lance, like everyone else, letting her believe a lie.
Anger flashed. “I’ll have to change your billing.” She had taken him off the Web site altogether but intended to reinstate him if they ever got back to the inn.
The tendons of his neck flexed. “Maybe you should get someone else.”
What? First he loves her, then he’s welching on their deal? “I’m not happy you lied to me, and I’m wondering how much more there is, but you’re my partner, Lance.” And she’d hold him to it.
He banged the pan down on the stove. “I can’t just do the job. I told you that.” Emotion rose from him like heat waves on pavement.
“I know you’re upset, and everything’s up in the air. Let’s just—”
He grabbed her by the arms. “I said I love you.”
Emotion seeped in, then rushed, then flooded. She slapped up her walls as fast as they tumbled. “You’re confusing love and tragedy.”
“I’m not confused.” His hands softened on her arms. “I am upset.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell the difference.”
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